To give someone an idea of the number of languages used in India, I tell them that on every currency note, the denomination is written in at least 15 languages besides English and Hindi. If someone shows interest beyond that, I have a 20-rupee note available to show them.

This is another matter that having these languages on the currency notes is more of a formality than something actually useful. I don’t know if anyone actually notices the text in those languages, and definitely no one reads the denomination in their own language. Still, let us take a look at the languages on my twenty rupee note. I can recognize most of the scripts, except I can’t tell between the four south Indian languages. Telling Asomiya (Assamese) from Bangla is also hard. Fortunately, the languages are in alphabetical order, so it is not hard to take a good guess. So, I am filling in what I can read. I would appreciate any help from people who can read the rest of them, or can correct what I have written.

Another thing worth noticing is that (at least) in Assamese and Bangla, the word Taka is written instead of Rupee. Taka seems to be the generic word for a currency note in Bangla, and is the currency of Bangla Desh. But, shouldn’t the Rupee officially be called a Rupee no matter what the language? If someone asked a Bangla speaker what the currency of India was, what would they say – Rupee or Taka? What about Oriya? And Maithili, a newly added official language? Call a dollar a buck or a smacker or a greenback, but officially it remains a dollar.

Looking at the latest list of national languages of India, my rupee bill is missing four languages – Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali. Looks like the newer notes are going to have a smaller font.

Another interesting bit of info from Wikipedia on the origin of the word “dollar”:

The name Thaler (from thal, or nowadays usually tal, “valley” or Sanskrit “bottom”) came from the German coin Guldengroschen (“great guilder”, being of silver but equal in value to a gold guilder…

Nice post! You are correct, Assamese and Bangla scripts are very similar.

Incidently, Bongs have always been calling their rupee/paise as taakaa, poeshaa. Often Taakaa-Poeshaa is used in combination to denote price or wealth. It’s nothing to do with admonishing the Indian currency, more of a linguistic approach.

My two paise on this post (I thought it quite appropriate to use a monetary metaphor in this context!) —

1) Malayalam
രൂപ is not exactly ‘equivalent’ to रूपा.
രൂപ is pronounced [rʲuːba], with the letter പ (transliteration = प), being pronounced as ब (this is in accordance with the phonetic rules of Malayalam & Tamil).

Also, transliterating letter-for-letter, പ = प and പാ = पा. So transcribing/romanising രൂപ as ‘rupaa’ is open to discussion.

At the moment, the only ‘neutral’ and unambiguous way of depicting the pronunciation of these words in various languages seems to be the IPA. On that note –

I wish to get some more information from u, hope u have, like what is the process they use to add language at the language panel? As u can see there was only 15 language before which is now 18. I know its useless but being a Boro(Bodo) i would love to see rupee written in boro language which will be “Nwizee Rang” in devonagri script.

Maithili speakers also call rupees–“taka”–maithili script too is quite difficult to distinguish from assamese and bengali…………….

secondly “taka” had always been used since the mughal times…
“paay” was the term for paisa
“rupya/rupees” must have evolved b’coz of silver coinns
silver==rupa coins==paay
silver coins====rupaay
and the britishers made it rupees